Source.ag acquires Optimal.
Optimal, the London AI company built one of the first systems to run a greenhouse climate on its own: heating, ventilation, screens, lighting and CO₂. Now it joins Source, already running in more than 500 greenhouses in 25 countries.
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The next step in autonomous control.
Source's AI already monitors the crop, forecasts the harvest weeks ahead, and automates irrigation. The missing piece was the climate itself. Optimal built exactly that, and proved it works in commercial greenhouses.
AI that runs the climate.
*Results from a test in one commercial-scale greenhouse in the Netherlands, compared with the benchmark Dutch grower.
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The Optimal team.
Founded in London in 2016 by Dave Hunter, Optimal built one of the first AI systems to run a commercial greenhouse autonomously.
The idea started in a data centre. Dave, a former head of quantitative trading at Deutsche Bank and a member of Oxford's Machine Learning group, watched DeepMind use algorithms similar to the ones he was researching to cut the energy Google's data centres spend on cooling by 40%. If AI could run a data centre, he reasoned, it could run a greenhouse. He founded Optimal that year through Entrepreneurs First.
The team, now part of Source, comes from Oxford, Imperial College, Airbus and Red Bull Racing.
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Beyond the root zone.
Source already helps you steer irrigation with AI. Now, we're extending that intelligence to the whole greenhouse climate.
“We have proven that applied AI can overcome this scarcity by running greenhouses autonomously, enabling growers to increase productivity and expand. By joining Source, we can now accelerate the deployment of this AI into greenhouses across the world.”
Dave Hunter
Founder of Optimal, now VP Autonomous Control at Source.ag
“We need many more greenhouses across the globe to secure access to healthy food for everyone. With the current technology stack, we do not have enough expert growers to run them all, but with AI we can solve this scalability problem.”
Rien Kamman
Co-founder & CEO of Source.ag
Read our press release
Availability: The first Source customers in Europe and North America will run autonomous climate control from winter 2026–27, with more crops and regions to follow.
New to Source?
Source builds AI for greenhouse growers. Our software runs in 500+ greenhouses in 25 countries, supports €2.5bn of tomato, pepper and cucumber production a year, and works with 13 of the world's 25 largest high-tech growers.
